


Prodigals

by touchstoneaf



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Canon, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-24
Updated: 2017-04-24
Packaged: 2018-10-23 15:41:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10722282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/touchstoneaf/pseuds/touchstoneaf
Summary: What has Doggett been up to all these years?





	Prodigals

Friday, April 7, 2017

4:49pm

 

As they crossed the arid yard to approach the door he felt his eyes fall on the swing.  It was a dilapidated affair; one side held together by a short length of dog-chain between broken wisps of old jute rope, the other an oft-repaired and segmented franken-rope consisting of about two parts sun-faded, multi-colored nylon to one part stranding-out bungee cord.  The seat, a flat plank of one-by, appeared to be the wasting victim of dry rot.

“Remind you of your childhood?” Ahmad asked as they passed.

He snorted derisively and jerked his head in negation.  It most definitely did not.  The much-beloved such swing of his childhood, though housed in an equally sun-beaten locale, had been situated such that all the neighborhood boys—and not a few adventurous girls—had come from miles around to take running leaps onto its hefty two-by-six seat and thence to swing out over the wide, fecund curve of sun-warmed river until, once the arc surpassed the thick red mud of the tidal-smelling banks, one might loose one’s grip and fall with belly-swooping daring into the cool and balming silence of the deep pools beneath.

“An old case?  One that got away?”

Another shake of the head.  He tried not to think of those.  Especially the ones with swings.

Especially not _that_ one with a swing. It was too confusing.

This was the last stop on their list—the seventh that day, but who was counting?—and he was grateful.  As they mounted the steps of the faded, peeling farmhouse he shot a glance at Ahmad and wondered if his partner was about to blow.  After all, seven in a row was a lot for a man in his situation.

Ahmad looked okay, though, all things considered.  Well, except that as pulled out his ID and prepared to knock on the weatherworn door he noted in passing that the other man didn’t bother to do his usual meticulous straightening of jacket and tie as he did the same, which kind of indicated that the guy was very much Over It. 

Not that he blamed his partner.  Ahmed had put up with a lot today.  “What’s one more, right?” he tried; a worn-out attempt at support. 

Ahmad snorted sardonically but did not reply.  He already had his ID held at chest-level, fixed like a shield over his breast as if to protect his heart.  Which was really painful to watch, actually, but you could only protect so many lives, step in front of so many bullets.  He’d done his best to try to change the world once, and all it had gotten him was a bleak, flat horizon, looming mountains…and one single promise left unbroken. 

\--They took mine, but They won’t take yours.--

He knocked.  There was a crash, a muffled curse, and the door creaked open after a few moments to reveal a man in worn, whitened denim and shirtsleeves, the tee paper-thin from long use and bearing the legend, ‘Colorado A&M:  We Make Farmers’.  Upon seeing the two men in suits standing on his stoop the farmer blinked, taken aback.  “Yeah?”

The spiel was rote by this stage.  He had, after all, been running it off his tongue pretty regularly since 2002.  “Mr. Reghard?  I’m Special Agent Jahn Doggett of the Federal Bureau of Investigation; this is Special Agent Ahmad Kassis.  We’re here because you’d recently purchased a large shipment of fertilizer, and we’ve been tasked with ensuring that you have all the necessary permits for an order of that size.”  

The man blinked again, eyes flickering from Doggett’s stubbornly blank visage to Kassis’ impassive one…at which point his face went beet red. 

Doggett sighed internally.  --Christ, he’s gonna be one of _those_.-- 

“You’re kidding me, right?”

Of _course_ the day would end this way. 

Kassis had tensed even further at his side, if that were possible.  With an internal curse, Doggett prepared himself for the coming battle.  God willing he could deescalate this thing before it could get out of hand.  “No sir.  I’m sorry, but I’m sure you understand our need to ascertain that anyone who has made such a purchase in no way obtained said materials for any other reason than to use them for agricultural purposes.”

The homeowner stared at him.  “I’m a goddamned farmer.  What the hell other purpose could I have for buying fertilizer than to use it to farm?” he demanded, witheringly, and his eyes shifted to Kassis’ deadpan countenance with a sneer that clearly said, ‘Unlike _some_ people.’

Smothering the urge to close his eyes, Doggett answered as patiently as he was able.  “I’m sure you have none, sir, but it’s our job to check.  If you could bring out the permits, we can get out of your hair.”

Mr. Reghard seemed unwilling to leave it at that.  “You honestly expect me to put up with this shit?  You come up here and _dare_ to call me a potential terrorist when you brought this…this _sand-nigger_ here to my house?”

\--And so it begins.--  It was a testament to Kassis’ recent tempering and newfound aplomb that he didn’t so much as shift, much less change expression as the racist epithet crossed the farmer’s lips.  Not that he didn’t hear much the same and worse up to twenty times a day, living out here in the Great American West.

Doggett took the helm; as per usual of late, probably because Ahmad didn’t trust himself to speak.  “Mr. Reghard, I’d ask you to please refrain from calling my partner names.  He is a veteran and has served his country faithfully for close to twenty years, in the Gulf and in the Bureau.  Even without that, he deserves simple human respect.”  This, too, could have come out by rote, the number of times he’d had to say it in the last five years, but it didn’t.  It remained an impassioned speech, if steady.  Between being a southern boy—polite was polite, after all, for God’s sake—and Kassis being a fellow soldier…

Christ; what the hell had happened to his home?

“Oh yeah?” the farmer demanded, defiant.  “Which country did he serve in the Gulf?” 

Doggett might just deck the bastard himself.  “I’m not going to dignify that question with a response, Mr. Reghard.  Agent Kassis’ service record is not in dispute here, but your rights to a half-ton of nitrogen-based fertilizer is.  Please show us the necessary permits and we’ll be on our way.”

Reghard seemed not to hear him.  “What did you do in the Gulf, huh, ISIS?  Spy on us for Al’Qaeda?”

Ahmad’s lips flattened to a thin line, though he did not reply. 

Doggett breathed through his nose.  _“Captain_ Kassis served the US admirably in the Gulf War, and reenlisted voluntarily when the Iraq conflict began.  His skills as an interpreter and in counter-terrorism actions have been invaluable and are not in question, whereas your possession of the fertilizer _is_.”  --And since you didn’t serve, sir, I see no reason to further debate the matter here with you.  You couch-crusading, racist _prick_.--  “Now, if you cannot produce the permits we’ve politely requested, I’ll be forced to report the matter back to our headquarters, where action will be taken to ensure that you are using the shipment appropriately.”

The last seemed to make the threat sink into Reghard’s head, finally.  Or maybe it was just that Kassis didn’t allow himself to be baited into a fight.  Grumbling irritably, the farmer turned and disappeared back into his house without another word.  In the interim Doggett glanced over at his partner.  Ahmad’s face was a familiar sort of russet color, much deeper red than his usual khaki skin tone, but other than that he remained impassive.  “You okay?”

Kassis’ response was clipped.  “Let’s just get this over with.”

He couldn’t blame the guy for wanting to get the hell out.

The farmer returned shortly and all but shoved the permits into Doggett’s hands, ignoring Kassis completely.  “Here.  You happy?  Can’t believe I have to fucking prove I’m not a goddamned terrorist when there are guys like this in my country pretending to be citizens…”

Kassis spoke up for the first time.  “Actually, our models show that the greatest threat to national security is white, Christian males…and the Bureau, despite being a thoroughly political animal, runs off of statistics.” Clearly he’d had enough.

Doggett didn’t look up as he perused the documents, aware he had to nip this visit in the bud before Reghard and Kassis ended up in a fistfight.  He could only expect his partner to take so much abuse.  “Be that as it may, everything looks in order here.  Thank you, Mr. Reghard.  Have a pleasant evening.”  He handed the papers back.

Reghard snatched them away and turned back to his living room.  “Good.  Now get the fuck off my porch, and don’t come back.  I’m an honest American doing an honest job, not some goddamned Muslim.”

“Nice to meet another honest American doing an honest job,” Kassis quipped brightly as they stepped off the stoop, and had what was likely the distinct pleasure of watching Reghard’s face turn scarlet with fury before the door slammed in their faces. 

The man looked slightly less burnt as they slipped in tandem back into the dubious shelter of his dark green sedan—his third in the last ten damn years, with the mileage he put on them out here—but again, who counted this shit anymore?  “Let’s see if we can beat some traffic east.  I want to get home and get some damn dinner.”

Doggett nodded and turned over the engine, letting Kassis check off the paperwork as he put the thing in gear and stepped on it.  The last thing they needed was to incite a shotgun incident by hanging around in the farmer’s yard for another few minutes.

Damn near an hour later they were back at home sweet home…or, rather, the multi-storied glass monstrosity that was the closest Bureau field office.  --Idiotic architecture,-- he mused, not for the first time.  Notwithstanding the fact that glass was a dumbass thing to build with in a land of glaring sunlight and minimal shade, the thing looked wildly out of place amidst the plastic-siding strip malls of this flat, arid foothill country.  But then, maybe it was supposed to stand out. 

If that was the objective, the Bureau had succeeded.

“You gonna do your standard weekend road trip?”  It was the first time Kassis had spoken since they’d left Reghard’s.

“As always.”  --And no, I’m not gonna tell you where I go.--  Not that that would stop his partner needling him trying to get an answer.  Shaking his head silently, Doggett steered his Kia around the back lot to pull up to where the guy had parked this morning.

Kassis snorted darkly.  “Man, I don’t know how you can spend the whole damn week in a car with me tooling around the frigging countryside harassing farmers like we’re netting a single terror cell, and then voluntarily drive north for God knows how long every weekend like you do.  You got some incredibly hot and lonely rural tail up there or something?”

As he sighted the Nissan Doggett slowed, grinning as usual at the accusation since it was so wildly incorrect.  It was the standard shot in the dark…and nothing could be further from the truth.  “I hope Farah and the kids have a decent weekend.”  Ahmad’s family hadn’t exactly asked for this—being forced to follow their head of household out into the boondocks in pursuit of pension—and really, with his credentials Kassis ought to be back in DC translating for the Bureau or the NSA.  He hoped for the kids’ sake and Farah’s that they _would_ be, sooner rather than later.  But as the man had said so grimly earlier, the FBI was a thoroughly political institution.  That was especially true back home where there were only so many potshots you could take at citizens for running their mouths and only so many fellow government servants you could pop in the jaw before they stopped forgiving you in the name of current political reality and sent you out here to BFE to learn a lesson in discretion. 

“As well as they can, out here,” Ahmad grunted darkly.  This field office was Kassis’ purgatory…or whatever was the Muslim equivalent.  He’d been at it five years…but considering that faced with with provocation like today’s he hadn’t punched anyone out in ages, Doggett hoped he’d be back in the more cosmopolitan DC soon where shit like that didn’t happen as often.  Micro-aggressions, yeah, but out here people felt like they had the right to say whatever the hell they wanted because they were “Americans”…and apparently Ahmad and his wife and kids didn’t count as such by virtue of their skin and religion or some shit.

Kassis popped his door to step from the seafoam Kia.  “See you Monday.”  It had the flavor of a sentence to be faced.

“Yeah.  Thanks for havin’ my back.”  Doggett had said the same to every partner he’d ever had, and he wouldn’t stop here.

“You know it”.  A pregnant pause.  “Thanks for having mine.”  They both knew it didn’t need to be said considering the kind of shit Ahmad put up with out here, but… 

 _“As-salamu alaykum.”_   It was no skin off his teeth to say it.  He’d said it enough in the Gulf, after all.

“And upon you, peace,” Kassis answered softly, and turned away without another word to step into his own car.

The moment his partner safely got his door open and vehicle started Doggett reversed to head back into traffic.  He had a nice three hour drive ahead of him.  Just like every Friday. 

\--They took mine, but They won’t take yours.  Not if I can help it.--   

xxx

It had taken every string he’d had left to pull to get this assignment.  He was damn grateful that after the x-files there had been enough goodwill left in the Bureau for him to get this gig.  He could just as easily have pulled Salt Lake.  That would have been more like a seven, eight hour drive to attain his weekly goal.  Maybe more when you factored in the back-tracking and bug-checking the early years had required. 

Three he could do, easy, in comparison.

He’d done this drive so many times in the last fifteen years he could do it in his damn sleep.  It was a duty, though, one he’d taken on as solemnly as any he’d ever assumed in his life, and he in no way resented the passing, donut-fueled miles, the infrequent and badly-maintained rest stops.  He had a job to do here, and he would do it. 

More importantly, it was a duty he enjoyed.  He got to witness a miracle that he had not been permitted for his own part.  As the miles unspooled, he chanted his mantra, let the pulse of it drive him on through the cash-only pit-stops, the ever-changing alternate routes, the washboarded, oiled-down, car-rusting back roads. 

Wheatland was a tiny town, all of maybe three thousand residents situated an hour or so to the west of the state border and about as far north across this unpeopled state as he’d traveled to leave the last.  His goal lay just a few miles outside town limits; a farmhouse like any he’d visited over the last fifteen years, if better kempt than some. 

He sat outside for a while once he’d reached the place, musing on how he’d gotten here. 

It had taken a significant amount of research to find the place, first of all…but he had been driven.  Driven by the tattoo of one thought, and aware that though _she_ had hoped, prayed, _lived_ on the wishful thinking that it had been over, for better or worse…he somehow very much doubted it.  After seeing those census records with Mulder that night, witnessing how deeply it went—into the NSA, into the highest levels of government—he couldn’t afford to believe what he knew she wanted to because she’d had no other choice if she’d wanted to stay sane. 

He’d been right.  She’d been afraid to look…but it really had been all too easy to find the answer he sought using what he, an insider, knew.  He had prayed he’d gotten there first…and by the grace of God, somehow he had. 

At first he’d just lingered out in front, a little down the road—your standard weekend stakeout—but after a visit or two they had noticed his presence. 

He’d scared them at first…but he’d finally been able to hint that there _were_ reasons.  Interestingly enough, they hadn’t been all that surprised.  Especially the woman.  He had a feeling she had always wondered _why_.  After that, though, they’d started inv…

“Uncle John!”

The slamming of a hand on his window broke his reverie, and he jumped, reoriented.  “Hey kiddo.”

“You just gonna sit out here all night, or are you gonna come in for supper?”

Doggett shrugged, collecting himself.  Grabbed his go-bag and exited the car.  “Guess I’m comin’ in.”

They walked up to the white farmhouse in tandem.  Entering the picket fence with its Wyoming state flag flying proudly above while Will chatted animatedly next to him, answering Doggett’s queries about his week, school, et al.  The boy was damn near sixteen now; tall as his father, the red-brown of his hair soon to give way to strawberry blond with the summer months and just red enough to remind Doggett of the mother he couldn’t recall. 

Not that he was allowed to tell him how much he looked like both of them.  Or how much he sounded like them, honestly. 

The Van De Kaamps seemed flummoxed sometimes when their insanely intelligent adoptive son eschewed all interest in things A&M bewildered by his aptitude for biology and chemistry—if there was ever a kid who was more destined for a doctorate, Doggett had yet to meet him—disconcerted by his fascination with the possible scientific underpinnings of spiritual matters; nonplussed by his use of physics to explain the thousands of sightings of ghosts over the millennia.  Doggett had just had to tell them that some things were a matter of nature rather than nurture.

And, always, he smiled to himself while he did so. 

In passing as they approached the house they dodged a much better-kempt wooden swing dangling under the shade tree, setting it to rocking lazily as they did so; the symbol of a kinder childhood than some, if one somewhat lacking in explanation for the urgings the blood. 

“…Even if Dad says that college that I should maybe go to a trade school, since I might not even get a job good enough to pay back the college loans.  But I dunno.  I just can’t imagine going to school for agriculture or something when I could be going for pre-med.”

Doggett shrugged, aware of the fine line he walked.  “It’s your life, Cochise.”  --As if you could ever be a farmer, with your genes.--

Will glanced at him; all gangling arms and legs and puppy feet, longish hair dangling.  “Is it time to tell me yet?” he asked…and instantaneously he was all wheedling expectation.

“Tell you what?”  He could play dumb, though he knew full-well what the child wanted, _needed_ from him.

A put-upon sigh, filled with frustrated longing.  _“You_ know.  The thing you said you…”

Doggett answered the sigh.  “I promised I’d wait till you were eighteen, kid.”  And it was hard, because whatever he was now, the kid definitely sometimes felt like an alien in his own family.  Had expressed it in exactly that way, to Doggett, on more than one occasion. 

He needed to know _why_ …and he had long-since sensed that the stranger-cum-adoptive-uncle carried the key to his answers. 

But Doggett had made two sets of promises; vows that ran in contradiction.  After considerable hinting that there was a very good reason for his consistent visitations, the Van De Kaamps had conceded that it might be necessary for their son to know the truth of his parentage; but later, they insisted when it came time for him to protect himself.  They would not budge on that last codicil, though; that that time remain on the horizon of his majority, and Doggett had staunchly cloven to that request.  After all, it was merely on their sufferance that he got to know his pseudo-godson at all.  And he had made a promise, if only in his head, to a certain someone, to stay close.  --They got mine.  They’re _not_ gonna get yours.--

He had lost too many people in his life.  Monica, whom he’d thought, after what she’d shared with him, would be there forever…but who had slowly called less and less, until recently she answered barely at all and only in the most superficial of ways for someone who had stood by him when he’d lost his own child. 

Dana…  Well, he couldn’t blame her for that.  He’d been there for some of the hardest days of her life, and could not but remind her of her unspeakable loss.  He could in no way tell her what he was doing for her, either.  It could only stand to break her heart.

Mulder…wasn’t a phone person.  Once or twice when Doggett had been back to DC for a training or whatever he had made it a point to dig the guy out of his hole for a beer; especially after he’d learned that they’d separated.  He’d been, by the way, utterly thunderstruck by that eventuality.  “I dunno, Muldah; I just wanted to see if you were okay.  If anyone were to split, I nevah thought it would be the two of you.”

Mulder had been characteristically bitter-yet-loquacious.  “Losing Samantha destroyed my family and sunk my mother into a depression my dad couldn’t live with.  I guess maybe the pattern it was heritable.”  A shrug.  “It’s why I’d avoided having a family myself.  But then one happened to me anyway.”  A self-depreciating smirk.  “I guess maybe it’s fated that mine turned out the same way.”

Doggett had made a face and toyed with his half-empty beer.  “Listen, Muldah, with all you went through in those last coupla yeahs, anyone could end up with chemical changes to the brain enough to cause depression.  And I don’t think what happened to your family was fated.” 

Mulder…was not in a good place.  But then, Dana wasn’t either; hadn’t been since she had been forced to give up her son, though she was better at pretending.

Sometimes he wondered if, after he told William who he was, he might ask to look them up.  Somehow he really thought the kid would want to.  It wouldn’t make the Van De Kaamps happy…but that would be on Will if he did, and he’d have every right.  --This is the only part of the promise I can keep right now, Will.  But once you’re in college and out of this house, I have a helluva story to tell you.-- 

If he _did_ look for them, Doggett would make sure he’d come to them armed with the facts.  That he’d know that they hadn’t _wanted_ to do it.  That they’d done it _for_ him.  And that doing it had destroyed them. --As long as it didn’t destroy you, though.-- 

\--They took mine.  Damned if They’re gonna take yours.--

He had two more years.  Fifteen already in this shithole; working out of Denver, bumming around farms in Colorado and Wyoming and netting exactly five possible terrorists in that time.  What had been a shit assignment for Mulder and Scully back when they’d had it from Kersh in ’98 had been for him in the world after 9/11 a duty he had fought to believe was worthy of his skills, even if the higher-ups had been all-too-happy to send him packing out of DC at his request the moment he’d figured out where that closed adoption had sent little Will. 

He’d had two mandates in that time:  find the kid, and find the terrorists. 

Protect the one…and stop the others. 

He’d at least managed one of the two.  --And one in two ain’t bad, right?-- 

As they stepped into the mud room and kicked the dirt off their shoes to welcoming calls from the waiting Van De Kaamps and as he watched the strapping form of the young William Scully-Mulder march ahead of him in single-minded pursuit of his wholesome Wyoming supper, his mantra rang in his head once more. 

\--They took mine, but They won’t take yours.   My hand to God.--

XXX


End file.
